Older people as represented in English quality newspapers

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims at tracing how older people and old age have been portrayed in English quality newspapers from 1989 to 2018 by comparing newspaper articles and readers’ letters to the editor.

Design/methodology/approach

This study follows the methodology of corpus-assisted discourse analysis and examines a corpus of readers’ letters to the editor and newspaper articles published in The Guardian and The New York Times, paying particular attention to the use and evolution of terminology and related stereotypes.

Findings

The investigation revealed how the portrayal of old age in newspaper articles and readers’ letters to the editor has mostly evolved symmetrically, with negatively connoted terms, including “elderly,” “old” and “aged,” which are generally perceived as unrepresentative of the new generation of older people, being replaced by more neutral or euphemistic expressions such as “older” and “senior.”

Originality/value

The analysis provides an interesting insight into how both the language and the discourse surrounding old age has evolved in the past few decades to accommodate to a changing society, taking into consideration how different professional and social groups, including older people themselves, represent and portray such an important life stage.

Citation

Rovelli, G. (2021), "Older people as represented in English quality newspapers", Working with Older People, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 183-192. https://doi.org/10.1108/WWOP-06-2021-0034